Summer is nearly over, and that means back to school for both big and little kids. For smaller kids, that means a trip to Walmart or Target or wherever you get overpriced children's fashions and school supplies.
For big kids, that means laying in supplies to survive the coming protests. What are all the kids wearing to the "Free Palestine" riots? Hopefully, the returning students were able to save up enough bail money from their summer jobs (if that's even a thing anymore).
The protests will be back. And they'll be given a huge shot of Starbucks double espresso as kids who watched all the excitement and romanticism during the protests last year arrive on campus as freshmen.
They will be forced to change tactics. The protesters will face administrators who aren't going to put up with much nonsense, given the number of prominent university presidents who lost their jobs because they couldn't square their woke outlook with the necessity of order on campus. Columbia University's President Minouche Shafik is only the most recent casualty in the war against chaos and antisemitism.
Not everyone is on board with the new restrictions.
“These policies, which go beyond reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, impose severe limits on speech and assembly that discourage or shut down freedom of expression,” the American Association of University Professors said in a public statement on Wednesday. “For example, these policies often require registration for demonstrations or protests, which, because they take place spontaneously or with little planning time, is tantamount to forbidding them.”
What they're really complaining about is that there will be less opportunity to cause trouble. In some ways, the teachers are more in favor of confrontation than most of the students.
Chronicle of Higher Education:
In Virginia, the secretary of education, Aimee R. Guidera, requested last week that state institutions update conduct codes before students return to classes, according to a memo first reported by the Washington Free Beacon. Guidera cited the “challenges” faced on college campuses last year and reports that the fall term could be hectic.
She outlined five areas in which public colleges must update their policies: disruptions of campus functions, violations of the law, masking, encampments, and facility usage. A spokesman for Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, said the Republican leader “appreciates the commitment of our college presidents and governing boards to prioritizing student safety on campus.”
It was a productive summer for the radicals. Students for Justice in Palestine held a “summer school” for students with “the aim of entrenching the frameworks necessary to sustain and grow the Student Intifada in the coming academic year.”
“There are a number of Palestinian journalists who speak English, who have millions of followers on Instagram, who are able to report directly ... what Palestinian experiences are,” said Maha Nassar, an associate professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona and adviser for its SJP chapter. “And so these students are seeing the effects of the war directly on the lives of Palestinians.”
With the Democratic National Convention next week and tens of thousands of pro-Hamas protesters descending on the city from all over the country, another factor that might boost protest attendance is the fact that "Chicago has more than 100 institutions of higher learning, including 21 nonprofit colleges and universities within the city and 40 in the Chicago suburbs. The suburbs include four public universities and 36 private schools," according to The Best Schools. That's more than 200,000 students enrolled in colleges and universities in the area.
It's not going to be pretty.
The Coalition to March on the DNC boasts 150 groups, including Black Lives Matter and Students for Justice in Palestine. It is already coordinating buses of protesters into Chicago. It’s asking for donations for “medical kits” and other supplies to “ensure that the March on DNC coalition” can “withstand the repression” of the Chicago police. Among other groups coming are outfits like Samidoun and Behind Enemy Lines, which agitate for “direct action” that goes well beyond marching. A recent Behind Enemy Lines post reads: “Now that the butchers of Gaza are coming to Chicago, it’s time to take this political battle into high gear,” which involves “getting in the streets to actually shut down Genocide Joe and Killer Kamala.” One protest is planned for outside the Israeli consulate, and its poster reads: “Make It Great, like ’68!”—a reference to the violence outside that year’s Democratic convention in Chicago.
Democrats have only themselves to blame for this. They created the monster in 2020 by coddling the George Floyd radicals who rioted and burned big cities. The coddling continued with progressive DAs refusing to prosecute protesters who tore up college campuses last spring.
I don't care how well-trained the police are; they are going to have to use force to keep the protests from descending into chaos, where people will be hurt and killed. That, of course, is what the protesters are after: to provoke the police into a violent response and then claim the innocence of lambs.
“As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” goes the proverb. Democrats, having sown the wind, must now reap the whirlwind.
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